Mmmm the best chicken

This weekend is Arnold's celebration of life, on Sunday, his birthday. M. arrived today, from Amherst, and his wife and brother and brother's significant other all arrive tomorrow. We had M. and my mom over for dinner this evening. I hardly ever do a "dinner party" sort of event, with food I've cooked myself and a tablecloth; usually when guests are here for dinner we get pizza or other to-go food and sit around the livingroom. I felt like cooking this time, though. We had Jamaican jerk chicken (grilled in the back yard), spicy rice (I made a ridiculous mountain of it), asparagus, mixed fruit (peaches, bananas, and raspberries), and sliced baguette (which I did not make; it was from Metropol Bakery). This all took way more prep work than I anticipated, but was actually perfectly timed, as it was on the table just before they arrived, so that I wasn't in a whirlwind in front of them. Note for next time: 3 hours.

( Recipe for Jamaican Jerk Chicken )

Another note: If I want to sit and read on the sunny hillside overlooking the middle school, with the view of the butte, precisely the wrong time to do this is 3:20-4:00 p.m. on a school day, unless of course I actually want to hear all those young people upon their release from being cooped up all day.